“The life of a wildlife photographer” Davis Boag. 29th November 2011

David’s advance publicity had done its work and so his evening presentation was eagerly anticipated by a full house of members, together with a limited number of guests. I hesitated as to what to call it. Perhaps performance better fits the bill as from the moment he took centre stage this dynamo of a man held his audience captive with a non-stop mixture of well-practised chat interspersed with a series of stunning images. All high-octane stuff. No one sleeps when David is in full flow.

All great fun and highly motivational as the underlying theme was “You can do it .. it’s not rocket science .. put your hand up if there’s anything here you can’t do”. And he was right of course. Broken down into bite sized chunks his tuition was satisfying and more’ish and it went on and on. A rollercoaster of an evening punctuated with laughter at David’s off the cuff conversational humour. It was a roomful of happy bunnies that broke for their mid-evening cuppa.

Piece de resistance was his “Landscape in an upturned dustbin lid”. Turn it over, put in some gravel, a chunk of turf. Fill it with water and some pondweed. Add one frog carefully placed to conform with the rule of thirds et voila ! Honestly, if a judge were presented with the resulting image it would merit a 9 or 10. “Who in the audience couldn’t do that ?” No hands went up.

So David is a good act. Heavily booked and rightly so but beneath all the non-stop flow of patter, what of the content ? Having spent my life in Sales and Marketing, it was easy to see where all of this was leading and quite unashamedly so. Honed on captive audiences on the cruise liners, with plenty of time to read, it was built up around the well displayed series of books that he had written which guided the flow and direction of his presentation. His working life as a photographer was largely spent fulfilling briefs for forthcoming publications and so these had a legitimate place.

However, less subtle and for me, a slightly more uncomfortable tack was the full on sales pitch for his DVD based photographic tuition course . . . available on easy terms at so much a month etc. Quite some time was spent illustrating its content and extolling it virtues as a finale to his evening at which point goods were on sale. He has to make a living and so this was fair play but it reminded me of how guided tours always exit through the gift shop. David doesn’t do subtle.

It would be unfair to end on a critical note as I and all to whom I had spoken, thoroughly enjoyed the evening and there is little doubt that we shall book him again. We had over fifty satisfied members and guests and everyone went home with a smile on their face. Any who stayed at home missed a treat.

Dick Loaring LRPS Chairman